College sweethearts
by TheKnittingLady
Summary: What might have happened during Dr Reid's days at Cal Tech. Yes, there's a case eventually. OC and rated M for violence and abusive themes. No slash.
1. Chapter 1

Please note: OC and some undetermined point in the time line. I'm new to this, so please review.

**The Chess Set **

**Six months ago**

Another case; another unsub; another victory; twelve young women this time, all lined up in neat rows behind a garage in another small town in another rural state.

Now they just had to find the guy who did it.

Morgan lounged in his seat on the plane and looked over at Reid. The kid had pulled a small chess set from his ever-present bag, and was setting up for a game, even though no one else was sitting near him. He nudged Hotch with his toe, nodded in the kid's direction.

"This kind of case troubles him."

"Yeah, and now he's playing himself. He does that, you know, whenever the victims are in their late teens and early twenties, and the killings have been going on at least five…"

"Stop, you know the rule, we don't profile each other."

"Yeah, I know."

Still, it bothered him. After a few minutes he got up, moved to the seat across from Reid, knocking him out of whatever reverie he was in.

"Hey kid, I'll play ya." Even though he knew he would lose, easily.

"All right."

As they set up the game he noticed one of the black knights. The bulk of the set was a simple, straightforward design, heavy enough to be comfortable in the hand, light enough to carry easily, not fancy at all. But this black knight was different, it was slightly larger than the other pieces, a far more ornate design, and it gave off a subtle, spicy odor.

"Sandalwood?"

"Yeah, it was a gift, a replacement." He chose to play black.

Well, Morgan told himself, at least if he was paying attention to the game, the kid wouldn't be dwelling on the case. He, however, needed his full concentration if he even wanted to make a good showing against Reid.

Little did Morgan know that Reid only needed part of his mental capacity to play. And that he had not been dwelling on the case at all, except to reflect that whoever the unsub was, he had made it easy on him by saving the eyes as trophies. Once he found those, he would know.

No, he wasn't dwelling on the case. He was remembering.

**Then**

It had been his last semester in the Mathematics program, before he'd achieved his first doctorate, at the ripe old age of sixteen. The very beginning of the semester and already he was looking forward to the next year, his work in Chemistry and Engineering, being seventeen, and losing his "handler."

That was the problem with going to university so young. Being away from home wasn't the problem, he stayed with his sponsor, Professor Fleinhardt, most of the time and headed home at least one weekend a month to check on his mother. Who, in all honesty, most of the time didn't even realize he was gone. No, it was that he was still young enough for the local school district to get involved, to insist that a "minor" could not be allowed to roam the campus unsupervised. After pointing out that Anything Could Happen and then the university Would Be Responsible, the end result was Lydia. She was a sweet, comforting, chatty type with a love of crocheting who couldn't have beat off a mosquito, but who pleased the lawyers and who made amply sure he would never have any sort of personal relationship with any of the other students on campus. And, as the only student on campus with a full-time babysitter, that he would never, ever meet a girl.

At least he thought he was the only student on campus with a full-time babysitter. He was completely surprised then, when he walked in to the Mathematical Analysis seminar to find another motherly woman sitting in the back row, a pile of improbably colored yarn in a bag at her feet.

"Oh good! It's my cousin Adelene. I was hoping we'd have a class with her kid. I'll sit back here with her. Look, there's a spot down in front for you."

Another handler meant someone else his own age. But he didn't have a chance to scan the room, the seminar was starting. He couldn't meet Adelene, or her charge, until after the class was over.

That was when he received his next, and more striking, surprise of the day. Adelene was standing next to a girl.

She stood a foot shorter, leaving him looking down on her head. Her hair, he noted, was elaborately braided and tucked in a way similar to the cheerleaders at his old high school. She had this odd, whitish stuff on her lips, and glasses even uglier than his. He couldn't tell what the rest of her looked like; it was wrapped in a too-large cotton sweater, and baggy, old jeans.

He stared at her for a minute, one part of his mind listening to Lydia and Adelene chatter, catching the name Lynnie while the other part wondering what was ringing as so decidedly off about her. It was her eyes, he realized. The lenses of her glasses were a horrid shade of orange, turning her irises a dark, muddy color. He could not think of a single reason for it.

"You kids mind if we eat lunch together?"

They both shook their heads and followed the women towards the main cafeteria. Food was acquired, meals guaranteed not to look geeky enough to attract notice in a high school setting. He wondered if she had had as much a problem with bullying as he'd had. And then as tables opened up they found a shady spot to sit, a bit away from their chattering handlers, next to a planting full of roses.

"So, you're Lynnie?"

"Gwendolyn. Ryder. And you're…?"

"Spencer Reid. I know it's rude, but, how old are you?" She had the most amazing, gentle voice. "Did you know that the statistics on two people in our age range in a program like this are…

"Yeah, I do, know the statistics. I'm fourteen. And it is rude to ask that." She interrupted, but he was used to that. "You're in the Mathematics program then? How much longer? And how old are you?"

"Sixteen. I should complete my dissertation by the end of this semester. How about you?" He reached for his soda, only to knock her miniature oranges into his open bag. Crap. Now he had to dig for them. "Why miniature oranges, anyway?"

"They're clementines, they're sweeter. I have two semesters left to go myself." Now he was impressed. He had to pull a wooden box out of the way when he pulled out her clementines . "Is that a chess set?"

"Do you play?"

Her smile turned competitive. "I have ninety minutes until my next class. I bet I can beat you that quickly."

"I'd like to see you try it." Food was shoved aside, the board set up between them. "What will you bet me?"

"Hmm?"

"A bet, a wager, what will you wager on this? Not money, something else?"

"Ummm. If I win we play again tomorrow."

I'd do that anyway, he thought. "Done. And if I win, take off those glasses. I can't see your eyes."

He couldn't clearly see her eye color, but there was no mistaking the dare there. "Done."

It took the better part of the ninety minutes, but in the end he…lost.

"That's impossible! I haven't lost in years." He'd been so wrapped up in the game, the most challenged he'd ever been, that he'd forgotten who he was playing against or why.

She laughed at him, "Good, you could stand the humility. Now we have to play again tomorrow." She started gathering the pieces, only to have one slip from her grasp and bounce from the table to a chair to the storm drain. "Oh! I am so sorry!"

"No, it's all right. It's not like it's irreplaceable. I'll pick up another this weekend. In the meantime we can use a quarter or something." He found himself grinning, amazing for someone who had lost. "I guess we're meeting again tomorrow, Gwendolyn."

"Gwen."

"Gwen."

**Six months ago**

Reid shook himself from his memories, just in time to head Morgan off at the pass. The next day Gwen had brought that replacement knight, ornate and sweetly scented. For the rest of their time in college they had played at that spot every day, and now his memories of this set were utterly bound with the scents of sandalwood and roses.

"Checkmate in four moves."

"Aw hell, kid, I knew I would lose." Morgan sat back with a chuckle. "Feel any better."

No, Reid thought, but Morgan didn't need to know. Once again he hid his feeling behind a puppy dog grin. "Yeah. I'm fine".


	2. Chapter 2

Note - I should point out that I don't own any of the major characters, or even a couple of the minor ones, except for Gwen. And I need to thank REIDFANATIC for beta reading.

This chapter comes with a warning for suggestion of abuse. Thanks for reading!

**The Music – Six months ago**

Another nondescript hotel room, another night alone; they all looked the same. Reid knew that one chain had given the FBI the best government rate, and so that was where the team stayed, whenever they could which meant that all the rooms tended to look the same.

Sometime around 1am he had finally read the entire file. He made his maps, sorted his notes, scrawled reminders on copies of photos, forms. He was quite done in and ready to sleep. As if sleep ever came that easily.

He could imagine her there, brushing her hair, smiling in the mirror, pointing out the one connection that was eluding him, that would break this case that much sooner, perhaps save one more life. iPod then, set to random. Some sound to fill the empty spaces in the room, where she ought to be. He put the buds in his ears, and lay back, turning off the light. The strum of the lute brought back the memory.

**The Music – Then.**

The sound of glass breaking was the first thing that pulled Gwen from her studies. It was quickly followed by curses in a male voice, and a laugh that could only belong to her mother. Great, her mom had brought her work home again.

Gwen quickly pulled on one of her bulky sweaters, then the orange-tinted glasses she habitually wore, followed by a coat of zinc oxide on her lips. When she looked in the mirror, she saw a dumpy, ugly, androgynous thing, surely nothing the men now making more and more noise in the living room would even consider bothering with. Not that she had any intention of leaving her bedroom until everyone out there had obviously passed out, but one couldn't be too careful.

She turned back to her studies, ignoring the roaring laughter, the ever louder music as best she could. Eventually groans and squeals could be heard over the music, and then the whole trailer began a rhythmic bouncing motion. After a while it stopped and started again, and again, as a pungent smell of musk and body odor filtered in under the door, along with the scent of smoke, nicotine and otherwise. She stuffed a towel under the door and went to bed fully clothed, even though sleep was impossible. Gwen lay in her bed, and calmly hated herself for being female, and vulnerable like this.

Around 2 am there was a knock on the door. "Lynnie girl? You up?" It was her mother, clearly drunk. "Lynnie girl?"

"Yes, Momma, I'm up." She'd been expecting this.

"Lynnie girl, come on out. The boys want you to join the party."

"No, Momma. I'm not coming out." It had been like this nearly every weekend, ever since her mother had sold their grandparent's place to pay her debts, and moved to this trailer in this neighborhood. But only recently had her mother begun suggesting that her daughter turn prostitute herself.

"Come on Lynnie girl, you'll love it." Her mother went on to describe, in slurring, graphic detail exactly what she thought her daughter would love. The very thought of the things her mother was describing made her stomach turn. How could anyone ever think she would love something so disgusting, so degrading, so painful? Intellectually she understood, but emotionally, the thought of what was happening on the other side of the door just sickened her. She just knew she could never do anything like that, ever.

"Come on baby, I need the money."

"No, Momma". Her mother was being far more insistent than usual. This was getting flat out scary. And there wasn't anyone she could call.

Wait, yes there was. Spencer. They had been spending more and more time together over the past few months, had exchanged e-mail and phone numbers. She knew he was staying with Professor Fleinhardt, maybe Spencer could talk the professor in to coming out to get her. It was worth a try.

As she heard her mother head back down the hall to talk to "the boys" she grabbed her phone and punched in Spencer's number. It didn't take long for him to understand the gravity of the situation, nor for him to explain it to Professor Fleinhardt. They told her to pack what she would need for a few days and sit tight. They were on their way.

Knight in singing armor, she thought, as she set to packing.

- -

It was a good thirty minutes before Spencer and the professor got to the far side of town, the one with trailers and tumble down shacks tucked in between liquor stores and empty businesses. It was clear that the main sources of income in the area were prostitution and dealing in drugs, and that the police risked their own lives in the area as seldom as possible.

Professor Fleinhardt was an older gentleman, arthritic, never athletic, who had spent his life in academia. He had wanted to call the police, to send them after Gwendolyn, but Spencer had rattled off statistics about abuse in the foster care system until the professor relented and agreed to drive. Looking at the state of the neighborhood, and hearing the sounds coming from that trailer, Spencer knew the professor would be useless. "Just keep the engine running, Professor. I'll go get her."

Spencer knocked on the door, which was answered by an emaciated, filthy woman who's body was clearly visible through the cheap, cotton robe she wore, and who was clearly intoxicated. "Hey baby, you hear for the party too?'

"I'm here for Gw…Lynnie, actually."

"Heh, I should have known that girlie was picking up her own boys at that fancy assed college of hers. Hey Lynnie! Your boy's here!' Gwen's mother stepped back as she hollered for her daughter, to allow Spencer to step in to the trailer.

"Um, if it's all right with you, she's going to stay with me for a few days, on campus." It just seemed the responsible thing to do, to tell her mother, even though the woman was clearly not functioning in reality. Spencer surveyed the scene around the room, from the drug paraphernalia, to the haze of smoke in the room, to the figures in the corners. Some of them were couples, he noted, and in the act of copulation. His stomach flopped.

"Come on, let's go." Gwen was right behind him all of a sudden, bags in hand, encouraging him to get out the door as quickly as possible. She was afraid, he realized, and hiding behind him for safety.

"No, you ain't goin' nowhere." From out of the shadows a hulk of a man stepped in front of the doorway. Bombed out of his mind like the rest of them, clearly unsteady on his feet, and completely, obscenely naked. But still, he was bigger than Spencer, in nearly every direction. "I paid good money for that little bitch, and I intend to get what I paid for."

Spencer could feel Gwen pressing up against him, trembling with fear. It was understandable; the thought of what the man was suggesting made him want to vomit and attack at the same time. So he did something he had seen every bully in his high school do more times than he could count, he wound up and hit the larger man twice, once in the stomach, the next in the head.

It would never have worked had the man not been intoxicated. But as it was he went down with a crash, right in front of the door. Spencer took advantage of the sudden confusion, grabbed Gwen's hand, and ran out, vaulting the fallen man. The room erupted in chaos behind them as the young couple piled into the back seat of the waiting car. "Drive, Professor. Drive!"

Spencer and Gwen watched out the back window to be sure they weren't being followed. The professor, in an effort to calm himself, started some music. As the strains of the lute filled the small space, Gwen turned to Spencer with a look that clearly read "my hero."

He'd never been anyone's hero before. He decided he liked it. He liked it a lot.

**The Music – Six months ago**

_In darkness let me dwell; the ground shall sorrow be,  
The roof despair, to bar all cheerful light from me;  
The walls of marble black, that moist'ned still shall weep;  
My music, hellish jarring sounds, to banish friendly sleep.  
Thus, wedded to my woes, and bedded in my tomb,  
O let me dying live, till death doth come, till death doth come._

_In darkness let me dwell_

Spencer lay back and listened to the mournful ballad. The lyrics were anonymous, but dated from the same time as John Dowland's, sometime around 1610. It suited his mood, as he lay there and remembered that night, wondering if he would ever again be her hero.


	3. Chapter 3

**The Marathon – Six months ago**

He and Prentiss were assigned to interview the family. Odds were nothing useful would come of it, but you never knew. Sometimes it was just the thing to help the crack a case. As they walked in he looked around the parts of the house he could see. These people had an unremarkable home, dining room, kitchen and den. Someone had been watching TV right before they got there, and had left it on. Star Trek.

Oh.

**The Marathon – Then**

It had taken four months for him to finally win a game. For the first month they had had lunch together every day; he'd found out she had a cynical, snarky, quick tongue that tended to put others off. She found out that he talked too much and spouted statistics about everything, which tended to put people off. They both found out that those were defense mechanisms and grew calm and easy with each other when they each realized that the other was not intimidated, and so they had nothing to hide.

By the second he was meeting her at the bus stop, going for coffee, finding her between classes, and walking her back to the bus. She had discovered his ability with card games and magic tricks, he discovered she played piano and had an interest in medieval embroidery. They started encouraging each other, watching and listening and enjoying the others unique gifts. And he had upped his end of the wager to her wiping that white gunk off her lips as well.

By the third they were studying together in the library on weekends, talking on the phone most nights, collaborating via e-mail, and were trying to get into the same classes for the next semester. He had told her about his mother's illness, his father's leaving, and the bullying he had endured in high school. She told him about her grandparents' deaths, the move from their home to the trailer, her mother's addictions and prostitution, and that her father could have been one of several. They both swore to any who inquired that the other was the best friend they had ever had, and how amazing it was to find someone who truly understood them. The faculty in the Mathematics department had started a pool over when biology would finally raise its head between the two, and the wager included unbraiding her hair, because he was curious about it. That earned him his first blush.

By the fourth month he had rescued her from her mother's "associates," the pool had spread to the Chemistry and Physics departments, and he had upped the wager to her taking off her sweater. Not everything, for that would be… less than chivalrous, and he already realized she was uncomfortable with the physical side of, well, anything. Just that bulky, ugly thing she always wore, just because he was curious. She seemed to be relaxing a bit, now that she had a safe place to stay. It was funny. Spencer had never thought of his home with his mother as a refuge before. But even when his mother was at her worst, he knew it was her illness. And most of the time, his mother accepted him. Most of the time he was safe when he was home. But Gwen didn't even have the safety of home.

By the time the rainy season came to Southern California she was staying over most week-ends, sleeping in the guest room, deposing him to the couch. And he was quite willing to endure the discomfort, even though he had shot up 4 more inches since they met. Professor Fleinhardt had, for some reason, decided to start turning in early, citing his arthritis, and leaving them the run of the lower floor of the house.

It was one of those nights when Spencer finally won a game of chess.

"Ah! Finally! All right then, let's see." He settled back into the couch and stretched his long legs, a deeply pleased smile on his face. He truly, deeply cared about his friend, no matter what, but after all this time he was utterly curious about what she looked like under the camouflage. And it pleased him to have finally beat her in chess.

Gwen rolled her eyes at him, and very deliberately headed for the bathroom.

"What?" Oh come on, he knew he hadn't offended her. Not after all this time together.

"You might as well get the full effect of a grand entrance."

While she was in the bathroom he turned on the TV. There was all-night Star Trek marathon on, something not to be missed. But she'd left the door partially open, and he could sense distracting movement beyond it.

"You know my Grandmother always said I looked like one of her dolls. But that was when I was six". She stepped out of the bath in a tank top and jeans and walked over until she was just about touching his knee, causing his breathing to come to a full stop.

He already knew her skin was that perfect shade known as "porcelain", and that she blushed fairly easily when she was relaxed and in an equally perfect shade of rose. He had not known that that bulky sweater had been hiding a set of curves that weren't large, but were filling out in perfect proportion to her small frame. The complicated braiding, French braiding she'd called it, had concealed loose auburn curls that hung to her waist. And the white gunk, some kind of sunscreen for life guards, had been canceling out the deep berry color of her lips. But it was the loss of her glasses that held him. Her eyes were a remarkable shade of brilliant, sapphire blue.

He heard himself talking, as if from very far away. "Your irises, are they hyperchromic? Is it congenital?"

"Yes, they are. It's a family trait; my grandmother had them as well."

"Oh. Oh, that explains the glasses then. The faint orange coloring would neutralize the blue, but not be interpreted as sunglasses in class. But, um, I don't understand why. I mean…" somewhere along the line he forgot to breathe,"…you're beautiful."

"Um, thank you." She fidgeted, clearly unused to compliments. "I started hiding from the guys my mom brought home. I didn't want to catch their attention. Now I don't want to catch anyone's attention, it's just too creepy." She was turning rosy pink in the cheeks as she stood there. "It's not creepy when you look at me, though."

"I'm glad." He could lose himself in her eyes. Drown in them. Now he understood that. "I'm sorry you feel you have to. You ought not, at least on campus."

"Maybe I'll stop, when you're around. I feel safe around you."

"I'm glad of that, too. Um, the show's starting." He was too lost to realize that his voice was growing rougher, to hide the look on his face. Thank god for Star Trek marathons. She sat down beside him and popped a candy between those perfect berry lips. He simply could not stop looking over at her, taking in those eyes, those lips.

Finally, around the second commercial, she asked, "What are you thinking?"

"I'm wondering what it would feel like to kiss you."

She looked at him a moment, a soft smile on her face. From anyone else even the suggestion would be stomach turning. But, somehow, Spencer was different. "You could try it, if you wanted." It was an invitation he could not turn down. As it turned out, she was soft, and warm and amazingly alive in his arms. And she tasted of butterscotch.

Of course that was the moment that Professor Fleinhardt (who had just won the pool) cleared his throat on the stairs. Even though Reid knew he would be in for a certain lecture tomorrow, and that Gwen would be getting one as well, odds were from the chair of the women's studies department, from that moment on nothing anyone could do or say would change a thing.

He was hopelessly in love with Gwendolyn Ryder. And she was in love with him.

**The Marathon - Six months ago**

He was the first in the car. As Prentiss walked around to the driver's seat he dug in his satchel and pulled out some candy. He missed the taste of butterscotch.


	4. Chapter 4

**The Picture – Six months ago**

The case was over, the unsub caught, they were back on the plane toward home. This time nearly everyone was asleep. Reid was sitting in the corner, looking at a small, leather folder.

Emily Prentiss couldn't help but look over as she left the galley and headed for her seat. It was a picture of a young woman, with long, auburn curls and the brightest blue eyes. She looks just like a china doll, Emily thought as she slipped into the seat beside him, jarring him out of another of his funks.

"Wow, she's pretty Reid. Who's that?"

"That is Dr. Gwendolyn Reid. That's her official faculty photo for Cal Tech."

The confusion on Emily's face was clear. "Reid, I didn't know you have a sister." That might explain why all the cases with younger women got to him so badly.

"I don't." He replied….

**The Picture – Then**

It had been a year and a half since the night that he'd discovered that Gwen's kisses tasted like butterscotch. He had had ample opportunities to confirm that observation since then, and he had availed himself of them as often as he could. He had also completed his Doctorates in Mathematics, Chemistry, and would be completing his dissertation in Engineering over the summer. Gwen had also completed Mathematics and Chemistry, and would be completing her third in Classical Studies. Engineering was simply not that interesting, she insisted, and besides, she needed to catch up to him, or so she said. But it would take her an extra semester, she had been offered a research slot for the summer, had accepted, and was on her way to get the picture taken for her Official Faculty Photo.

The problem was one of housing.

Now that he was eighteen he no longer needed a sponsor, and so would be moving into the faculty apartments. This was excellent timing because his former sponsor, Professor Fleinhardt, was moving on to do some work for NASA. But that left Gwen without her safety net, one she had used more and more often as puberty had its way with her. She'd only grown an inch taller, coming in at exactly five feet, but her curves had filled out in ways that he tried to only think about in the shower.

"I still don't see why you can't stay with me when you need to. I mean, the apartment has two bedrooms."

"Because you're going to be eighteen. A sixteen-and-a-half year old spending the night in the same house as her seventeen year old boyfriend with a chaperone is vaguely charming according to current social mores. A sixteen-and-a-half year old spending the night in the same apartment as her legally adult eighteen year old boyfriend, without a chaperone, is illegal."

He turned to walk backward, the better to talk and to admire the way the morning breeze tossed her curls. He'd finally gotten her to wear her hair down on campus, and to save the glasses for when her mother's boyfriends were around. After all, the admiring glances on campus were just that, admiring. Everyone knew that Dr. Gwendolyn Ryder was quite taken.

"So next Sunday it's fine, next Monday it's illegal. You know that's ridiculous."

"Yes, I know. But that doesn't help us solve the problem."

"Well, as near as I can see it, there's only one solution left. Marry me."

Even though they were already very nearly late, she stopped dead in her tracks. "What?"

"Marry me. You can, you know, you just have to have your parent's legal permission. Just wait until your mother is drunk enough to not know what she's signing and put the form in front of her. I'm leaving for Vegas at three; you can fly out and join me tomorrow. By the time we get back, we'll be able to share the apartment." He didn't expect they would be sharing a bedroom right off, and he honestly didn't care. Gwen was not only beautiful; she was his intellectual equal in every way. He didn't want to lose her presence in his life. If that meant the physical side had to go slowly, so be it.

"I don't want to get married in Vegas! Not like that anyway. I want a ceremony. I want vows and formal oaths. I want a dress. I want flowers in my hair." He thought her flustered blush was utterly lovely.

"Since when are you a romantic?"

"Since it involves my wedding!"

They had resumed their walk across campus, now it was his turn to stop. "Wait, so you are objecting to the style of the ceremony, and not to the concept?"

"Yes. A wedding deserves a certain ritual, a formality. You know they have lovely weddings at the faculty club, we could have it there with all of our friends as witnesses. It would be perfect"

"So that means you'll marry me?"

"What?"

Something took over. Some sense of chivalry or of decorum or of the moment being momentous. Something made him drop to one knee in front of her and take her hand, causing a small crowd to gather, causing her sapphire blue eyes to go very, very wide.

"Dr. Gwendolyn Ryder, will you marry me?"

She turned rosy pink, and in a heartbeat went from ambitious academic genius to flustered girl. "Yes, yes, Dr. Spencer Reid, I will marry you."

He pulled her into his arms and swung her around as the small crowd applauded. The kiss made them late for her appointment.

**The Picture – Six months ago**.

Reid looked down at the small travel frame. Gwen's faculty picture showed the results of that day. She looked so happy, so confident of the future. So much the woman he loved.

You'll get that back, he thought, or I will find you peace.

"I don't." He replied to Emily. "She's my wife."


	5. Chapter 5

**The Ring – Six months ago**

Emily slid into the seat beside JJ at the far end of the plane, utterly shocked at what she had just learned. She elbowed the woman next to her out of her doze.

"JJ, did you know Reid was married?"

"What? Reid's married? Since when?"

"I don't know. He didn't want to talk about it."

Woken by the sudden conversation, Morgan opened his eyes. He looked across at the two women. "What was that?"

"Reid's married. He has a picture of a girl he says is his wife." Emily whispered, just loud enough for their small group to hear. "Did you know?"

"No. Since when?"

"I don't know."

"Hm." Morgan thought a moment. "You know we shouldn't be nosy, but that's a big thing not to know about someone." He thought a few minutes more. "Hey, pass over that laptop." Garcia would know something. Garcia knew everything, or at least could find it. "Got a name?"

"Gwen. Reid, I assume. And it looked like a faculty photo of some kind. So maybe someone at Cal Tech."

He started typing the e-mail to his baby girl, while JJ looked over at Emily. "You know that explains the ring he wears."

"What ring?"

"That silver ring. You never noticed?" JJ settled back into her seat. "I always thought it was an heirloom of some kind, maybe his mother's, so I never asked about it. I guess I was wrong.

**The Ring – Then**

Later that day, the day of their engagement, Reid went home to Vegas.

Gwen went home to get her mother to sign the permission for her, a minor, to marry.

She didn't even know why she kept going back there, except that legally she had to, and that it was her mother, after all. She could remember back before her grandparents died, when they'd had a house, when they looked after her. Even then her mother had problems, but there had been other, loving, responsible adults around. The last thing her grandmother had said was "Lynnie, you're a smart girl. Look after your mother as long as you can." And she had, as best she could. But from now on she would do so at a safe distance.

On the bus she had put on those ugly, orange shades, twined her hair up under a trucker's cap, and pulled a ratty hoodie over her already bulky sweater. In moments she went from college professor and young woman in love to an androgynous denizen of the worst part of the gutter. It was the camouflage she needed just to walk from the bus stop home.

The door slammed behind her, and she locked it out of habit.

"Mom. I'm home."

Her mother was sprawled out on the couch, surrounded by drug paraphernalia. Her works were still dangling from her arm. Gwen just looked at the familiar scene and sighed.

"Come on Mom, you need to get to bed."

Something wasn't right. Her mother was remarkably still, even for someone lost in their high. And when she went to shake her she was also remarkably cool. But it wasn't until she couldn't find a pulse that she knew for certain.

"Oh Mom."

She sat on the coffee table next to the chess set, that last remaining family heirloom, all carved sandalwood and stone that was now missing a knight. All she could do was sit and stare at her mother's body. This changed everything.

- -

Later Reid blamed himself. With all the chaos around his mother and her involuntary committal to the asylum it was a full day before he realized he'd had no word from Gwen. When he got back to Pasadena he heard that she had been turned over to the county department of social services, which had no intention of ever letting a minor marry.

For the next few years they referred to it as their summer of hell.

For months he only had third hand word of her. She was in and out of foster homes, mostly run by families who had started out well-intentioned, but time and stress had made them coarse and intolerant, and resulted in them bullying this strange, delicate, too intelligent creature tossed in their midst. Inevitably they would find themselves unintentionally humiliated, and feeling pushed past tolerance in their own homes and would strike out in retaliation. At which point she would call the police, and the injuries would be recorded and she would move on again. She spent the last month in juvenile hall, simply because no one would take her in, and in solitary because her social worker recognized that she would not be safe with the general population. She later said that it was the closest thing to a good time she'd had all summer. It gave her a chance to finish her Chemistry doctorate and learn Greek. It also reinforced the lesson that she had learned all summer, that keeping your mouth shut and your thoughts private were much better ways of protecting yourself than using cutting snark.

Spencer Reid spent the summer completing his Engineering doctorate, and trying not to be worried sick about what was happening to his Gwen. The Dean got to know him far too well, as Dr. Reid was in his office two or three times a week, begging him to try to get information from someone.

By the time the fall semester started Dr. Ramanujan of the Astrophysics department had been certified as a foster parent. She had volunteered after word got around the university about what was happening to one of their own. Even though she was a ward of the state, and not allowed to marry, Dr. Ramanujan considered her more of a colleague and roommate, and so carefully went to the library that first night, to allow Gwen and Spencer a long, tearful reunion.

- -

It was a year and a half since they had been reunited after that summer of hell. They had both completed their third doctorates, had turned themselves to other studies. Psychology, Sociology, Philosophy, attempts to understand why, to understand what it all meant. And along the way they had met Jason Gideon, a profiler from the FBI. He had almost convinced them that they could use their remarkable gifts to directly make the world a better place.

Once again they were walking across campus. Once again the topic had turned to housing.

Gwen closed her phone with an angry snap. "That's it. That's the last transition house. None of them will take me." Tomorrow she would turn eighteen, and have to leave foster care. Once again, she was looking at being homeless.

"Why not? Did they ever say?" He looked up from the files spread out on their old table to take in the vision of his fiancée. Eighteen months of full-time on-campus living, away from the bullies of her childhood had come a long way toward restoring her self-esteem. One way it showed was through the free-flowing hair, and the lacy little tops and long skirts she had taken to wearing as she'd slowly grown more comfortable in her own skin. Another was through a more confident attitude, a certain strength as she'd finally grown confident with her own voice.

He liked it. He liked all of it.

"According to them, college professors make too much for any kind of subsidized housing. But eighteen year olds just getting out of foster care don't have a credit history, and so cannot get an apartment. And campus housing won't convert your apartment into one that allows roommates until the new fiscal year starts in September." She already planned to spend the next three nights at his place, in the spare bedroom. What she would do after she exhausted the three-night limit for guests in faculty housing was anyone's guess. There was nothing else open until the fall.

"Well, there's always the old answer. Eighteen year olds can get married."

"Spencer, I…" She sighed, looked at the roses. "I don't know."

"What? We've been engaged for two years this week and now you're saying no.?" No, that couldn't be right.

"No, I'm not saying no. I want to be married to you; I want us to be together forever. It's just that…I don't think I'm ready for…" She blushed and stopped. Eighteen months in what was, for her, a healthy environment had gone a long way toward helping, but she still didn't think she could go to his bed without thinking of her life in the trailer with her mother, the sounds from the other room, the way those men looked at her. And she just didn't want that there, she wanted what they had to be as special and different and somehow clean as it had always been. "I mean, do you honestly want…that?"

"Well, eventually. I can't say I haven't been thinking about it for quite some time now." He was human, and male, and quite deeply in love with a beautiful woman, of course he was thinking about sex. But at the look on her face he stopped. "I would never force you in to doing something you didn't want to do, you know that. I'll wait however long it takes, even forever, as long as, well, as long as you don't leave me." He didn't think he could take being abandoned again. He simply could not lose the one person who understood him so well.

She stepped into his arms, the safest place in the world. "I'm not leaving you, Spencer, not ever. I can promise you that right now." She could see him relax at her words. "But I love you and I love what we have too much to sully it with something that vile and disgusting. You…you never saw what it was like."

He took her arm and continued down the Olive Walk, thinking for a while. "I just can't imagine it always has to be like that. I mean, people have written so many positive things about physical love over the centuries, and I know that it was mostly written by men, but if they truly loved the woman in their lives and it was as horrible as you say I can't believe that they would have been so pleased about it all. Have you spoken to anyone other than Dr. Ramanujan about the way you feel?" At the shake of her head he continued, "You might see if someone at the counseling center can give you a referral. It couldn't hurt anything, and it might help. In the meantime we can still get legally married, for all the benefits it would provide, and be roommates. We'll, I don't know, get silver rings for the present. Then when you're ready, and only when you're ready, we'll trade them out for gold or something. We'll just get married in stages."

She was quiet a long moment, looking at the roses. Thinking about the past, and the future. When she turned to him there was a smile in those sapphire blue eyes.

"When do we leave?"

- -

Twenty-four hours later they walked out of the Clark County courthouse. Together.

**The Ring – Six months ago.**

Morgan's phone rang just as he was stepping off the plane. "What you got for me, baby girl?"

The voice on the phone was normally smooth, silky, and seriously witty. But this time it sounded serious, and deeply sad. "I found her. Dr. Gwendolyn Ryder Reid. Come back here, guys. You have to see this."

"On our way." Morgan quietly rounded up Emily and JJ, and they headed back to base.


	6. Chapter 6

**The File – Six months ago**

They met in Garcia's room, filling it near to capacity. For once she didn't mind. Someone had hurt one of her family, very little mattered more.

"All right, baby girl, what you got?"

Garcia was just opening her mouth to reply when a stern, stone like voice spoke up from the back of the room.

"On what?"

JJ, Morgan and Emily parted ways to make room for Hotch. He'd come back to pick up a file, only to find most of his team crammed into the computer room. Emily was the first to speak up. "On Reid's wife, sir." She looked a bit sheepish, until she saw the confusion on Hotch's face. "You didn't know either?"

"No. " There wasn't even a mention of a wife in his official file, which had Jason Gideon all over it. It was wrong, it was rude, it was nosy. But it was also important. Hiding something that big from the team was at the very least unprofessional. He made a quick decision on the matter. "Go ahead Garcia".

Garcia took a big, deep breath. "Dr. Gwendolyn Reid, formerly Dr. Gwendolyn Ryder." She touched a key and a picture came up on one of her screens, the same faculty photo Emily had seen.

"Damm." Morgan whistled. "Those eyes."

"Hyperchromic irises." was Hotch's contribution. "That's rare enough to be identification."

"She's 22, two years younger than our Dr. Reid. She received her first doctorate in Mathematics from CalTech when she was fifteen, making _her_ the youngest to receive a doctorate. She also has doctorates in Chemistry and Classical Studies, as well as a Master's degree in Psychology, and is a Master's degree candidate in Sociology. She has an IQ of 184 and an eidetic memory, but I have no idea how fast she reads. She speaks fluent French, Italian, ancient Greek and Latin in addition to English, of course." Garcia rattled off the stats from her curriculum vita.

"Beautiful and as smart as he is." Emily commented. "She sounds like the perfect wife for him."

"So, where is she?" Hotch frowned as he listened. So far nothing added up.

"I'm getting there." Garcia shot back. "Father unknown. Mother deceased, drug overdose in 2000. That same year This Dr. Reid, then Dr. Ryder, ended up in the foster care system. Eight different foster homes in two months, all ending with verified abuse cases, three black eyes, two missing teeth, one broken wrist and one boot-shaped bruise on a kidney. She ended up spending a month in juvie, in solitary when no one else would take in the braniac troublemaker." A collective wince went around the room. "CalTech talked one of their professors into certifying as a foster parent, where she spent the next almost two years, but not unsurprisingly she married our own Dr. Spenser Reid on her eighteenth birthday in Clark County, Nevada." With a touch she called up a picture of the marriage license in question.

"Okay, that was two years before he started at the BAU." Hotch thought back a bit. "Wasn't that about the time Gideon started recruiting Reid?"

"Yes sir." Garcia spoke up. "According to his notes on the matter, which I dug out of the black pit of his files, Agent Gideon was actually trying to recruit both Doctors Reid."

By now they were all confused. Why hadn't they heard any of this before? Morgan was the one to voice the question this time. "So, what happened?"

**The File – Then**

They had been married for exactly six months. Six months of near bliss. They never even argued. They disagreed, surely, but those disagreements came down to logical arguments, debates over the facts and the statistics involved. She had, for example, produced numerous studies to prove the substantial number of coliform bacteria breeding in biofilms on non-porous surfaces, and a time map of an average week, to prove to him that bathrooms needed to be cleaned weekly, at a minimum, and that the only way to meet that goal was if they both worked on different parts at different times.

Hey, it worked.

Tomorrow the movers would come and start driving what few things they had east, while they flew off to spend Thanksgiving with Spenser's mother. After that it was on to Washington DC, and new careers at the BAU. Today she was finishing a bit of embroidery, while Spenser packed up the last of the books. It was a fairly new hobby of hers, but she was deeply enjoying it. A connection to women throughout history, she said, their arts and creativity. Or something like that. So far she had made herself an1800's style sewing kit, an Elizabethan watchband in blue and something shimmery, some bits and pieces to decorate her desk, and was currently finishing some kind of picture.

Reid was kneeling by the boxes, trying to decide if packing Heinlein in with the classics bothered him or not. He decided not and was taping up the last book box when he looked over to see her not exactly finishing anything. She was just sitting there watching him, a gentle smile on her face. She'd been doing that a lot lately, he realized, something was up. "What are you thinking?"

"I'm wondering what it would be like to kiss you." Today had been her last therapy appointment for a while, and certain ideas had been reinforced. "Come here."

"You know what it's like to kiss me." He leaned over the couch and placed his usual brief pressure on his lips. But he was pleasantly surprised when she wrapped a hand around his neck and held him there for a kiss that was longer and more interesting. "Wow. So, does this mean, um…"

"That maybe while we're in Vegas we ought to get one bed instead of two? And perhaps pick out those gold rings. I…I think I'm ready to try. I mean, if you want to?"

Want to? His head was swimming, his heart was pounding, and his pants had suddenly grown uncomfortably tight. His only concern was managing to not make a mess of them while he kept things slow and gentle for her. "Yes! Absolutely, definitely yes. But, do we have to wait until we're in Vegas?" When she shook her head he gently lowered himself onto the couch, the better to indulge in another of those complicated kisses, and gently run a hand over her curves.

Of course that was the moment his phone would ring.

"Yes…oh…oh okay, I'll be right there." He hung up, and bent down for another kiss. "The payroll department, something about my retirement account. I have to go over and sign something before they close for the holiday. I'm going to take the bike, and I'll be back as soon as I can. Just don't change your mind, all right?" She laughed at that, the most wonderful laugh. "I love you."

He was too flustered to remember to lock the door. He would always hate himself for not locking that door.

Thirty minutes later he was heading back. The payroll department said that no one had called him, and that there was nothing for him to sign. Just as he was getting to the apartment building he ran into Jason Gideon, clearly there to check on them before they left. He told Gideon the tale as he pushed the bike, only to have Gideon stop, and stare at the building.

"Call 911".

Gideon took off for the apartment at a run. The building was nearly silent, most people having left for the holiday vacation. But his instincts told him something was very, very wrong.

Reid flew after him, calling 911 even as his bike clattered to the ground.

But they were both too late.

The door hung open, there was evidence of a brief struggle. But it was not enough, not nearly enough.

Gwen was gone.

**The File – Six months ago**

"Oh my god." JJ breathed, when Garcia finished telling the official version of the story. On her screens now were images taken by the local police. While she had been telling it she had passed over the file she had assembled, Gwen's history, the file from the Pasadena PD, the bare bones profile, which was all even Jason Gideon could do. "And no one has found any evidence of her since?"

"Nope." Garcia replied. "That's all she wrote."

"Well this explains why he gets in a funk every time dead young women start turning up. He's lookin' for his wife's corpse." Morgan turned to look at Hotch. "So, why isn't this an active case?"

Hotch opened his mouth to reply, but an all-too familiar voice piped up from the back of the room. "Because the locals never asked for the BAU's assistance. And I wasn't formally with the FBI then. And Gideon and I didn't want you all to think I was just here to work on this case. I mean…" Reid shrugged, and there was a hopeless look in his eyes. ".. I was, in the beginning. I spent a year trying to get the local PD to take it seriously, so did the university, but everything just went cold. So I finally took Gideon up on his offer. I figured if any one could find her the BAU could. But now I'm just part of the team, I guess." Reid shuffled forward to look up at Gwen's picture on Garcia's screen. He remembered the taking of that picture, that wonderful, horrible day. The one true blessing of his eidetic memory, he literally would never forget her.

Hotch took one look at his long-suffering colleague, no, his _friend_, and made another decision. "All right, this case re-opens as of now. Garcia, print up everything you can find, copies for everyone. JJ, first thing in the morning I want you to contact Pasadena PD and tell them we're coming. Do whatever you have to do to explain the delay, but emphasize that we're looking for the missing wife of an FBI agent. And contact the university; we want everything they have on her, down to her freshman year homework. That call meant someone was after her, deliberately. This was not a random crime. From now on unless something comes up that could save a life, this is what we do." Everyone nodded, the boss man had spoken.

Reid just stood there, listening. Hope, the demon that wouldn't die, still clung to him. If anyone could find her, this team could. Or at least whatever was left to be found.

As they filed out Morgan tapped Hotch to stop him. "You know, it's been years. You're looking for corpse."

"Yea, well, at least he'll know where to go to say good-by."


	7. Chapter 7

Please note: This is where the mature language and themes start kicking in. Just a warning.

**The Break – Six months ago**

**Here**

After his revelation, and Hotch's decision to re-open the case, the rest of the team got together and decided that Reid was spending way too much time alone. That first night, Morgan drew the short straw and drove him home.

Reid's apartment wasn't far from Quantico. It gave new meaning to the term bland. Clearly, he had landed in the first place the recruiting office had suggested, and hadn't moved since.

He also hadn't unpacked.

"Dude," Morgan stood in the entry and surveyed the scene. The furniture had clearly come with the apartment, as had the bland art on the Navajo white walls, and the circa 1970's stuff in the kitchen. Behind the beige sofa was a stack, no a wall of boxes sized for books, still sealed in the packing tape. "I have a few boxes I haven't opened yet, but come on."

"I didn't see the point to it." He could remember all the books he ever read, for one. For another, he hadn't had time to open any of his research since it all happened. And there was no need or desire to open hers. "I'm going to go grab my mail." He slipped back out again.

It was clean, Morgan had to give him that, but otherwise it was mostly unused. The complete Star Trek collection by the TV did not surprise him. Neither did the fact that the bed looked like someone made it once and a while, and either slept on top of the covers or on the couch. Okay, yeah, you're not supposed to profile team members, but this place just screamed seriously lonely.

The desk was the only thing that looked truly used in the place that looked homey. An antique, from the looks of it, with a stained glass lamp, a fountain pen, some boxes with embroidered pictures on the top, dammed expensive paper as well as the usual sort. Pictures too, the family kind. Some of Reid as a youngster, with his mom and what must be his dad. Others later, different people, what looked like a university, graduation a few times. Most of them had what he now knew was Reid's wife in them, sometimes he was in the robes, and sometimes she was. They looked happy, Morgan realized, complete.

Peeking out the window to see if Reid was back he just opened the drawers to poke a bit. Mostly the usual desk clutter, until he got to the bottom drawers. They had been fitted out with frames and hanging files, one per month, that expensive paper, letters, every day. The other side held what looked to be a complete file of the case, as well as every possible lead that could have been run down, and even a near-complete profile. Two things were abundantly clear here, that the kid still loved her, and that he was not giving up.

Of course, he was so curious he didn't hear Reid behind him until he cleared his throat. "I think there's some beer in the fridge. I don't know how old it is, I don't remember buying any." In his first days here, when the Pasadena PD had officially given up, he was more than a little lost.

"Aw, kid, I'm sorry. I was being nosy." There was no excuse, and Morgan knew it. But now that the mask was off, anyone could see his friend's pain. He trailed after him into the kitchen, dug the bottles out of the near-empty fridge while Reid rooted about for a bottle opener.

"No, it's all right. I write to them, you know, my mother and Gwen. That's what I do when I come home at night. Only there's no place to send Gwen's letters so I just keep them here for her. It's easier to tell her about my day than to think about what her day might have been like." For a moment he thought about just that, and with all they had seen since starting at the BAU, it was easy for Morgan to imagine what caused that look of bleak pain on his friend's face. Reid wandered over to the desk and ran his hand over the back of the wooden chair, "I guess this is home."

Morgan popped open the beer, only to find it had gone flat in the bottle. "Look, kid, I am going to order some pizza, and some better beer, and why don't you tell me all about her." It was better, he thought, to get the kid remembering the good times, how she had been, to get him focused on that. For right now he'd just listen. That was all he could do.

Come morning, he vowed, he would do more.

**The Break – Now**

**There**

Another case, another unsub, another pile of bodies of missing young women. Five bodies had been found in various dumpsters behind various truck stops all through central California. All five women had been college students, abducted in housing catering to students. And they had tracked a dozen more missing with the same MO.

In the four most recent they had caught the same man on the security cameras. They just didn't know if he was the killer.

He was sitting in the local station, where Hotch and Rossi were working on the interview. Meanwhile JJ and Prentiss were interviewing possible witnesses, and Morgan and Reid were at the suspect's house, looking for something, anything to connect him to the missing women. And Garcia was remotely poking through his computer.

"Okay, I have just been looking over this guy's video collection and let me tell you, he is one sick puppy." Garcia must have been deeply shaken by what she had seen. Usually she was far wittier when she was on the phone. Morgan already knew that he would be taking his baby girl out for some serious cheering up when he got home. "So far I've identified all of our bodies and eight other missing girls, and it's all rape and sadistic torture. Really, really nasty stuff."

"Yeah, but that doesn't mean anything. People consent to that kind of thing all the time, especially college-age girls looking to make a little extra spending money. All that means is that they have another connection, not that this guy abducted them or forced them in any way. He could have just downloaded them all from the internet, case closed. We have to find something that actually links him physically with the girls." While Morgan was on the phone he was standing in the suspect's bedroom doorway, watching Reid poke through the guy's closet.

Garcia said she'd keep looking. Morgan hung up, just as Reid stepped out of the closet. "Man, you looked like you've seen a ghost. What is it?"

"Here, here, take this. I can't. It'll…it'll screw up the case. Here." he thrust a shoe box into Morgan's hands and headed down toward the car. "We need to get back. Right now." Morgan followed, and drove them back to the local station. Once there Hotch and Rossi came over while he opened the box, as Reid stayed well back from the table, his hands in his pockets. "It's watches, women's watches."

Rossi opened the box and shook them out on the table. "Trophies, maybe. We should see if any of the family members could identify them."

"You…you don't have to." Reid stepped over and used a closed pen to separate one of the most unique from the pile. A chunky man's digital, with a delicately embroidered band. "It's Elizabethan blackwork, only in indigo blue and silver instead of the traditional black and gold. It's…it's Gwen's." He looked to be almost in tears. "I watched her sew it; I even helped her put the pins back in the watch when she put the band on. She was wearing it when she went missing."

This was good enough for Hotch. He had the watch neatly bagged up, and then went back in to work on the suspect. He lay the watch down in front of the man. "This watch was found in a box of women's watches we just found in your closet. It belongs to the wife of an FBI agent, who went missing some time ago. I believe you kidnapped her to blackmail her husband into giving you information to be used in the support of terrorist activities. Now, you can either talk to me, or talk to the interrogators in Gitmo, your choice."

The calmly delivered threat had the intended effect. He started talking, and talking, and talking. He was one of a chain, he said. Usually around four weeks into every semester he would receive an anonymous e-mail, the identity of a girl someone in the chain wanted. It was his job, his pleasure, to hunt them down and take them out of their lives. He relished being able to take down those snooty college bitches, knowing they would be broken and humiliated. He loved being the instrument of power. He would take them and drive them to a different truck stop every time, turning them over to the next link in the chain. Then he would go home and wait for the videos to become available. The women would be passed from member to member, staying with some for days or weeks, some for months. But eventually they would move up, each time going to someone more violent, more sadistic. Until eventually they reached the one called the Reaper. The end of the line.

Reid listened to all this from the other side of the mirror. There was no telling how long Gwen was in that chain, if or when she had reached the end of the line. He stood there, his arms wrapped around himself, not realizing he was pale as a sheet, even shaking slightly. "So we still don't know if she's even dead or alive."

Morgan put a hand on his friend shoulder, hoping to calm him down. Dead, he was thinking, after all this time. But he couldn't say that until they knew for sure. "You gotta hope, man. You just gotta hope."

Reid was silent for a time, then, "I left her, didn't I?"

"What do you mean?"

"She's been in California this entire time and I just left her here. I stopped looking and gave her up for dead. I moved all the way across the country and went to work on my _career_, while she was going through…" He couldn't finish.

"Now you listen to me," Morgan turned to face him fully, and his voice was very firm, "You came out to the BAU because that was the best place to work from, and the best team to work with, period. You did everything you could to find her, _including_ moving across country. You said so yourself, that was your original motivation for joining the team. Hell, if you weren't on the team we wouldn't be on this case at all. So you just knock that off, this is not your fault. Now she is family and we are going to find her and bring her home." And that was clearly the end of that.

Reid turned to look through the window. Morgan was right, and he knew it. He just had to stay focused, do his job, and not lose hope.


	8. Chapter 8

**The Warehouse**

**Here**

They poked through the computer. Garcia went through every file, tracked down every IP she could find. Nothing, she couldn't find a thing. They exhausted every option until the only thing left was a series of sting operations, coaxing out the members of the chain one by one, catching them in the act of transferring a police officer acting as a victim, then using them to coax out the next one. It was slow and careful work, and it took weeks. But with each link broken, singly and in pairs, they were finding victims alive, some who had been missing for years.

It gave them hope.

In the meantime they found more and more videos. They used them to build, profiles of the remainder of the chain, cases against the ones they had captured so far and case files to help the psychiatrists helping the rescued victims. But they never, ever let Reid see them. He didn't need to see her like that, just in case. The general consensus was that his memories needed to be kept clean.

While the remainder of the team worked around him, Reid sat at his desk day after day and remembered. Every day, every moment. He debated readying things for her homecoming, but some illogical, superstitious part of him told him not to tempt fate. But planning for the other possibility was something he simply could not do. So day after day he sat at his desk, and waited.

**Nowhere**

_Cold, it was always cold._

_She could feel herself shivering, told herself it was in response to the feel of delicate legs crawling over her skin. Over her bare stomach, breasts, thighs. She could hear them crawling through the hair beside her ear while laying there in a space that was too narrow, all hard concrete and steel, and felt the delicate legs begin climbing up her temple. _

_Her arms were still trapped beneath her. No matter how frantic she became, the bonds would not loosen, not one inch. _

_There was no space to turn, no room to try to shake it off. Now way to dislodge the things that were crawling over her flesh, into her naval, perhaps toward her gagged open mouth. _

_She told herself she was shivering because those delicate little legs were crossing eyes that would no longer open, or because it was cold. _

_It was cold and damp, she was lying in water, foul water, used water; water that made her already raw back, her more tender parts, burn like fire; water that never drained away, that her emaciated body couldn't warm, that was always cold._

_She told herself that was why she was shivering. _

_It wasn't because of fear, not anymore. Now that everything was ruined, how could there be any fear._

_She felt the cold as the door above her came open, the stench panting over her face, heard the chuckle, the whine and the hose being dragged across the floor._

_She was wrong._

_It was fear._

_And it was cold._


	9. Chapter 9

Please note: This chapter rated M

**The Armory, Pt 1.**

**Here**

By the third member of the chain the BAU was running into a problem. The other members were sending e-mails, always from different accounts, always from internet cafés or poached wireless, asking where the videos were. They were getting suspicious, and that was bad. The team found someone in San Francisco who made similar videos, and who was willing to work with them. Similar except for a few, key points: everyone volunteered to be there, no one went home with anything more than a few bruises, everyone went home happy, or at least well-paid, and in the end everyone went _home_. It was a very important difference. Peter, the head of the company in question, asked to work with the BAU, the better to precisely tailor the videos to fit what the unsubs had been churning out.

It was the first day of a full week of shooting. After hearing the story at least a dozen women had volunteered to be "victims." They had chosen six who most closely fit the profile. Jessica, one of the volunteers, was standing in one of the studios, pressed against a false wall made to look like the cellar where the suspect just taken into custody did most of his shooting. She wasn't shackled to the wall yet; she was just holding herself there while a make-up tech applied spirit gum and paint to her shoulders, butt and thighs, mimicking the thick, black welts they had seen some of the women receiving in the videos. The movie team called them cane welts, and they made most of the actresses shudder.

Reid had never been so close to a naked woman before. He was sitting on a stool talking to the volunteer, trying very hard not to look, while she was being made up for an "after" scene. "So, why do you do this? I mean, work here."

"Well, I enjoy it. It's fun; it's sexy. Ever feel a massive endorphin rush after a hard workout, or after pumping a lot of adrenalin?" She smiled as the FBI agent nodded. "Well, combine that with multiple orgasms and you have one hell of a workday. And they pay well." She named a figure that made Reid's eyes widen a bit. "I work two days a month to cover my expenses, and the rest of the time I'm in med school; granted I usually wear a wig and a lot more makeup, so no one can recognize me."

Reid digested this a moment. "Thank you, for volunteering today."

"Oh, sweetie, what those bastards are doing is just beyond wrong. If any of us can help get monsters like that off the streets we'd be glad to help."

"Okay, Jess, lean forward just a little and stick your ass out, nice and slow." The tech stood up from where he'd been working on her backside, and gently put a hand on her waist to guide her. "Feel that pulling?" When Jess nodded he continued, "That's a thin latex bubble full of fake blood. If you lean just a little more it will pop, and we'll get the trickle effect we're looking for, okay?" Jess nodded again and the tech turned to the director. "We're ready."

Everyone stepped back as they gave one last fluff to her hair, to make it look properly bedraggled, then strapped her into the shackles on the wall. A few seconds after the director called "Action!" Jess leaned back her head and started howling. Suddenly she went from a calm, confident med student to a shattered mess of a victim, crying out the anguish visited on her flesh. She bent just so and the blood started trickling down her lacerated buttocks and thighs. Reid stood well back, and admired the work with the analytical side of his mind, while the emotional tried not to think at all.

-

In the next studio down, Prentiss and Morgan were watching them set up for a whipping scene. The studio had been set up to replicate the torture chamber of another member of the chain. The volunteer, Heather, was being made up with a larger latex bubble, this one along the side of her ribs and breast. Prentiss and Morgan were talking with Michael, an older man and one of the regulars at the studio, who had volunteered to play the unsub. Prentiss was watching the making-up, with a confused look on her face. "Why are you doing that? I thought you were beating her back?"

"We are. But your bad guys have lousy technique, they let the tip wrap."

"The tip wrap?"

"Yeah, see." He pointed himself in a safe direction and let go with the whip. The tip made that distinctive cracking sound in the air. "When you hear that, it means the tip is breaking the sound barrier. That kind of thing will cut human flesh. By the time the tip wraps around to the front of the torso it's almost at that speed, causing a great deal of pain and damage in tender spots. Now, I'm not going to be hitting Heather nearly that hard, so the bag will give something more delicate for the whip to break and give the effect of cutting. It will also provide more protection for her skin."

"You're not going to hit her that hard? How are you going to make it look right?"

Michael ran his gloved hand down the whip. It came back with a dark, red coating. "The pigment will come off on her skin, making it look welted. It's going to take a lot of cold cream to get it off, but in the end she'll just be a little pink under it, no worse than a very mild sunburn.

Prentiss thought a moment. "I want to try."

Morgan looked away from where he had been admiring the lovely Heather. "What? Prentiss, you're not the type."

"It's not right to ask someone to volunteer to do something we wouldn't do. Besides, it's just like a mild sunburn. How bad can it be?"

Michael took it all in stride. He coiled the painted whip on the paper draped table beside him and went to pull another from a cabinet. They all came wrapped and sealed in plastic, the agents noticed "There are wavers on that clipboard, go ahead and sign one."

Prentiss signed one, and handed the clipboard to Morgan. "They make everyone sign one here?" Morgan accepted the clipboard as he watched the man pull a red and black whip from the bag, "Why not use one of the ones on the table?"

"Are you kidding, these days I almost make my husband sign a waver before I take him to the movies?" Michael smiled as he tested the weight of the new whip. "Because those most match the one your bad guy uses, so we're saving them for Heather. One person per use, then we have them cleaned and sterilized. You can't be too careful." Michael nodded to Prentiss, then at a section of wall that wasn't being used for the film, "Okay, take off your top and bra and brace yourself against that wall."

Prentiss passed her gun to Morgan, who looked away until she was facing away from him. "Ready." The whip lashed out twice, but both times all she felt was a slight whack and a burning sensation. She looked back over her shoulder and saw two faintly pink stripes across her back. "That's it? I've been hurt worse in training."

Michael nodded, "Yes, that's it. We rarely get harder here. There's no need to damage someone, it's more about the fantasy. Now this is what happens when you lose control of the tip." He lashed out once more, this time drawing a sharp "Ow!" Morgan looked over with concern as she covered herself with her hands and turned to show the damage. Just on the side of her right breast, where it met her rib cage, was a small, bright pink mark, barely the size of a dime. "That felt like getting popped with a rubber band, hard. Ow."

"You'll have that mark through tomorrow, but the rest should fade in an hour. I wouldn't go harder on you, period. I've seen some shoots out of Eastern Europe, where they seriously worked the girls over. You can see the damage." Morgan looked at him, impressed, then signed a waver, and pulled off his shirt. Would you go harder on me?"

Michael walked around him, admiring the well-developed torso. "Yes, you have the meat for it. Darker skin scars, so I won't go hard enough to cut on the back. The tip might, though." He went to the closet for another whip, carefully placing the one he had used on Prentiss aside for cleaning, as she dressed and traded guns with her partner. As soon as she was dressed enough to turn around she hissed at Morgan. "What are you doing? Are you crazy?"

"Look, someone has to know what that girl went through, first hand. And if this guy isn't going to work on you he sure as hell isn't going to work on Reid, he's skinnier than you are. Just keep an eye out for Hotch."

Michael came back with a blue and black whip this time, and nodded Morgan over to the wall. Morgan looked at the shackles above his head and swallowed his fear. This is nothing like the past, he thought. But Gwen had her own baggage too, that was part of it. "Let's do this right."

Michael came over and fastened his wrist into the iron shackles. A couple of good solid tugs told Morgan that they were very real. He wasn't going to be able to protect himself from this. "I'll give you three, like the ones in those videos you brought, no more. If it's too much, your safe word is Virginia. Call it and everything stops immediately." Morgan nodded.

As Michael stepped back Morgan braced himself. That little girl, my kid sister, Reid's wife, went through this, he thought, hell my ancestors went through this. I can take a few just to know. Then, without warning, his world exploded. Red hot fire seared across his back and ribs. He gave a huge yank on the shackles to instinctively try to free himself, but they held firm, and a growl came from his throat. The second one came, burning across just below the first, drawing a gasp, leaving him shaking from adrenalin. One more, he thought, I can take one more. He hadn't felt this helpless, this vulnerable, in a long time. The third one brought an actual cry of pain as it cut across the first two at a slight angle, feeling literally like the skin on his back had been laid open. He cut me, he thought, that bastard cut me when he said he wouldn't. He hung there for a long moment, what felt like forever, forcing himself to think of what it would be like to expect another, to not know if there would be more, if they would ever stop. But then Michael and Prentiss were letting him free.

"Damn," there was a mirror nearby. He turned to look and saw that his back was uncut. Three long welts were rising, clearly turning to bruises under the skin. He could feel the heat rising from them, even as the first, sharp pain was subsiding. "Those will last a week." Michael informed him as he came back with the first aid gear, "They'll be sore and tender to the touch, but then you must have had bruises before."

"Yeah, yeah, I have." Prentiss was looking at his ribcage, where three small, triangle shaped gouges were welling small drops of blood, the only skin that would be broken that day. "You know, he's a professional, this is a safe space, and my armed partner was watching you like a hawk. I can't imagine what it would be like to have that go on and on and not knowing someone had your back."

"I wonder what her mental state is going to be like. You know, we could get her back alive only to have her so emotionally scarred that marriage isn't a possibility anymore." Prentiss looked around as she started cleaning and bandaging the tiny wounds. Heather, the volunteer, was having some of those fragile latex blisters applied to the back and inside of her thighs. Another tech was preparing another set on another volunteer, this one perfectly molded to the contours of her breasts. "We have to get her back, and soon."

**Nowhere**

_Breathing._

_The world had been reduced to breathing._

_In._

_Out._

_The pain had brought her to this, reduced her to breathing._

_In._

_Out_

_Everything was pain. From her knees to her collar bone, front, back. Pain_

_In._

_Out. . _

_He pushed, threw her over what felt like a humped bench, hard under her, lower than at the last place. Her arms trapped behind her, useless, her head banged against the concrete; the bench forced the wind from her lungs. _

_That hurt, a deeper, more ominous hurt. She coughed, deep._

_In. _

_Out._

_What could be more than the pain?_

_In._

_A sniffling sound._

_Out._

_A delicate brush._

_In._

_Her blood trickling down her spine._

_Out_

_The sensation of being licked._

_In._

_She shivered._

_Out_

_She was wrong._

_In_

_She'd forgotten._

_Out. _

_It could always get worse._


	10. Chapter 10

Please note: This chapter rated M

**The Armory, Pt 2**

**Here**

Peter was standing in the editing room with Rossi and Hotch, looking at one of the videos. "No. What we're doing with Kerri is bad enough. We're not doing this one."

The two agents looked at each other. Rossi spoke up, "We don't know if this guy is the last one in the chain or not, and he's done that with every victim. Not having may make the difference here. I know it's asking a lot, but isn't there anyone…?"

"No. I double checked our files, that's a hard limit for every performer who works with us. And it would have greater repercussions. I'm sorry."

Hotch took a deep breath. "Garcia, have you been able to confirm, we haven't seen Gwendolyn Reid in any of this type of video before?"

Garcia had come out to help with the editing, and to be sure the videos were posted in the same way as the previous one, so as not to add suspicion. "No, she hasn't. And may I ad thank god for that. Like the poor thing hasn't had enough humiliation already"

"So we should be fine without it, if we can catch up to her." Hotch nodded to Peter and Rossi, but spoke to Garcia. "And agreed."

- -

JJ came out of one of the studios to find Reid sitting on some stairs, a cup of coffee cooling in his hands, looking off into nothing. He didn't look any different than normal, she realized, but something told her he was a wreck. She had next to him, nudged him a little. "Want to talk?"

"She's been in videos like this, hasn't she? You guys just haven't been showing them to me." JJ hesitated, then nodded. "The thing is, everyone here is so kind to each other, so careful and respectful. These women feel stronger after, important, cared for, even loved. But, if she's going through this for real, then it might be just the opposite for her. I mean, all of this is just physical, it's wounds, it's injury, it will heal. The physical thing doesn't matter to me, I just want her alive and healthy. I want her back the way she was, and…."

"Spense, she's not going to be back the way she was. There's no way she could go through something like this and not be scarred mental and emotionally. She can still heal from all that, be happy and well-adjusted, and a part of your life, but it just won't be like it was."

Reid sighed. "I know that, I do, I just…I miss her, I guess. I miss the girl I grew up with. My 'high school sweetheart' if you will. I want her back."

JJ wrapped her arm in and around his. "You never really mourned her loss did you? You might want to think of that because even if we do find her alive, Spenser, your high school sweetheart is never coming back. I'm sorry. But I firmly believe that we are going to find that strong, resilient, young woman out there. Now it's going to take time for her to heal, time and patience and a lot of listening, but when she find out who she is after all this, she is going to be the most amazing woman you ever met. And she already loves you more than anything. I just know you're going to love her too."

"Even while I say good-by to the girl?" His voice was breaking as he tried to take it all in.

We forget how young he is, JJ thought as she pulled him in tight. "Yea, even while you say good-by to the girl."

- -

"Sir." Garcia stepped out of the network room at the armory, and over to where Hotch was using a folding table as a desk. "They just uploaded another video. The unsub I mean. I tracked it back to another cyber café." She was clearly upset, pale and no where close to her usual bubbly self. "It's Gwen, sir, I think. She never opened her eyes. It's…one of those videos, Sir."

Hotch sighed. "Hopefully that means she's still alive. Just..don't tell Reid." Garcia nodded as she slipped away.

- -

Rossi, Morgan, Prentiss, Hotch and SA Keri Southwood were gathered in the lowest level of the building. A set had been assembled there to match one of the videos, the one that appeared to be a warehouse of some sort. This was where they would film the most dangerous of the videos. The one with the hoses

For three days the studio techs had been pointing high pressure hoses at human figures made of ballistic gel, something Peter had obtained from a friend of his who worked at another studio in the area. They had been adjusting the pressure to mimic the way the pressure of the unsub's hoses had affected the women in the videos. Since the pressure was considerably higher than the studio usually used, and there was a chance of actual injury, none of the resident actresses were going to be acting as the victim. Thankfully, an agent from the local bureau office was willing to take the risk.

She was sitting on the set, carefully wrapped in a towel, being laced into something the crew called an 'armbinder'. A black leather sheath that trapped both her arms behind her, and could be tightened until her elbows touched. A position, they noticed, that made one even more vulnerable than ordinary handcuffs.

"Why do I get the feeling that this is going to suck." Keri was new to the bureau, and looked a number of years younger than her career path would indicate.

"You can always back out, you know. We may be able to get away without these videos." Hotch was not thrilled with risking any injury on this project, at all.

"No, you may need it. Besides, I expect to be remember for this, when you have an opening at the BAU."

The film crew came over and said they were ready. The BAU team settled well out of the way, next to Dr. Matsuda, a pleasant woman who had checked Keri over thoroughly, at Peter's insistence. Hotch turned to her for reassurance. "You're sure she's ready for this, Doctor?"

"Yes." The Doctor replied. "There's a risk of bruised or cracked ribs with this, we wanted to be sure there were no underlying conditions that could be exacerbated by this stunt. But her heart is strong and her lungs are clear, she should be fine. Oh, and after reviewing those videos I have a list of injures to be prepared to deal with on your victim."

Hotch murmured his thanks and JJ and Reid joined the rest of the team, just as Keri was being placed with her back in the corner of the 'warehouse', and her towel was removed. Everyone held their breath.

At the call of "Action!" The team turned on the hose, striking her full in the torso with a blast of water. She screamed, tried to turn, but the angles of the corner made it impossible. Without her arms to protect herself she was helpless to do anything but stand there and be battered by the ice cold spray until her feet slipped out from under her and she went down. Just as the unub had, the crew used this to make sure they soaked and pummeled every part of her body as she screamed and cried.

After the same rough amount of time the unsub had tortured his victims the director yelled "Cut!" The hose was shut off and everyone rushed over to help her to a chair, wrapped her in warmed towels, free her arms, and generally just hold her until she could catch her breath and calm down. Her skin had stayed pale with the chill of the water, but now that it was off mottled red bruising was beginning to appear everywhere.

Doctor Matsuda came over and gently looked over her ribs. A few pokes gained her another cry and a closer look. "Well, you have a few bruised ribs, but I don't think you broke any."

"Go to the ER and be checked out, just to be sure. That's an order." Hotch was firm, but it wasn't needed, Keri was glad to go. As Morgan and Prentiss gently helped her to the dressing room, Reid stood there, looking at the empty set as if he could still hear Keri screaming. JJ came over, and held him.

**Nowhere**

_She was slumped in the corner._

_Soaking. _

_Freezing. _

_Shaking. _

_Tired._

_Coughing._

_Bones rattling. _

_Things tearing loose deep inside_

_The sensation of being pulled. _

_Dragged. _

_Cold, wet metal. _

_Edges that scraped skin._

_Coughing._

_The sound of the door being opened. _

_Falling. _

_Landing hard. _

_The door closing above her._

_Coughing._

_She was tired_.

_So very tired._


	11. Chapter 11

**The Capture **

**Here**

When they finally reached the last unsub in the chain, they ran into another snag.

"We're not just going to be able to stop this guy at the truck stop and then go get the girls out of his basement." Morgan was the first to chime in at the meeting. "This guy is using a warehouse somewhere, and we don't know where. We're going to have to follow him and take him down there."

Hotch looked over the elaborate instructions the most recent suspect captured had given them, under threat of Gitmo. "Yes, but if he opens the trunk and sees it empty, he'll know we've caught up to him. That means someone has to be in this trunk, and at risk if we lose him."

The silence hung around the table for a long moment. Finally JJ spoke up. "I'll do it. I look like I fit the victim profile. Just…" She took a deep, nervous breath, "…be sure you don't lose me."

"Are you sure?" Hotch would ask that many times over the next few days.

"No. But someone has to." JJ admitted, and then looked over at Reid, who was looking stunned. He'd never realized how much his family loved him before.

"Thank you," was all he could say.

**- -**

A few days later JJ was sitting in the back of a van behind a gas station close to the truck stop in question. The plan was to put her in the trunk of the car, one specially ventilated, and then Rossi, dressed to look like the last member of the chain, would drive it across the street to the truck stop and make the exchange. JJ was wearing a wire beneath the mummy wrap that immobilized her from waist to ankle, and a GPS locator. In addition, there were a number of local and federal teams around to follow the suspect, with SWAT and a medivac helicopter waiting nearby.

"You're sure of this?" Hotch was still worried.

"Yea, I am," JJ lied smoothly. In addition to the mummy wrap she was wearing one of Peter's arm binders, which was making her shoulders ache, and made her feel disconcertingly vulnerable, as well as one of Morgan's old t-shirts, donated for the occasion. She had spent some of the ride making a list of things she'd rather be doing than being at the mercy of an unsub who liked to torture women, and had come up with a list that was very, very long.

Rossi came around and knocked on the back of the van. "Ready when you are."

Morgan found the gag-thing that Peter had provided, the same make and model as the one used by the previous suspect. The long, thick cylinder nearly filled her mouth; once the strap at the back of her head was buckled it just barely triggered her gag reflex. Then the strap at the top of her head forced her jaw closed on the thing, sealing her lips around it with a padded gasket. Not only would no sound escape, she had to very calmly focus on breathing past it, or it was possible to get light headed quickly. Then they pulled a black bag over her head. Unlike the ones the victims wore, this was made out of scrim, not cotton, so it appeared solid to the unsub, but she could see through it, and hopefully make an ID later.

"Ready?" At her nod Morgan and Hotch lifted her out of the back of the van and into the trunk of the prepared car. They tactfully looked away as Prentiss cut off the t-shirt leaving her like the other victims, bare from the hips up. Then they shut the hood.

With the wire at her hip the team could hear what was going on around her, and with the small speaker tucked into her ear she could hear them, but she couldn't speak to them at all. She lay in the dark of the trunk and felt Rossi drive her the short way to the other truck stop. They parked, and all was still. "I'm in position." She heard Rossi report. He was sitting in the diner attached to the truck stop, wearing the cap and jacket that would identify him to the unsub.

She waited what felt like forever, but was really about ten minutes. The trunk opened and she spotted an older man, much like the other suspects. The air was cool, and she shivered as she was reminded of how she looked. They better stick close, she thought. Then the trunk closed, she felt him get into the car, and they started moving.

The voices in her ear were reassuring. They reported being right behind her as they drove and drove, one spotter passing her off to another, the team never far away. Finally they slowed and stopped, although the engine did not turn off.

"What is that place?"

"Looks like an abandoned winery."

JJ heard what sounded like a gate opening. They drove a short way, stopped, and it closed again. They drove on, down a rougher road that made her bounce on the hard trunk floor. Another stop and she heard him get out.

"Shall we move in?"

"Not yet. If he unloads her here, we know it's the right place. Stay ought of sight."

She shivered when she heard the barking of a dog.

**Nowhere**

_Cold. _

_So cold._

_Shivering. _

_Won't stop._

_The dog._

_No more._

**There**

The trunk opened, and the unsub leered down at her. JJ shivered as he ran his hands over her torso, wishing she could just shoot the bastard now and be done with it. He lifted her out and over his shoulder like a sack of grain. Looking down she could see the large English Massif following his master.

He brought her inside, down a hallway, around a few corners, to a large, cool space, one she recognized from the videos. The floor was odd, he had to step up on to it, and so it must have been a later addition. It was covered with coffin-sized metal tiles. Or so it looked at first. Then she spotted the recessed hinges and latches. Storage, she realized, storage spaces for girls.

A moment later her theory was proved correct as she was dumped into one, and the trap door shut an inch above her nose.

She hadn't been paying attention, the team was already moving in. She listened in the dim, narrow space as the unsub and his dog left the building, and were cornered by the team. They got him, thank God. Morgan spoke to her directly. "Okay, JJ, we're coming in to find you."

Any minute now, she thought. Any minute now and they'll find me and hopefully Gwen too.

**Here**

They took it carefully, room by room. Mostly old offices and storerooms, empty or neatly laid out with his torture gear, but no place to hide one girl, let alone two.

They came to the last room, a big, empty cavern they all recognized. Rossi looked around in disgust. "Well, this is where he tortures them, where the hell does he keep them.

Reid figured it out first. He reached down to one of the large, metal tiles, stuck his finger in a decoration, and lifted it up. "These are storage spaces. They're in the floor."

Morgan looked around the large space and tried to count. "It looks like there must be a hundred in here."

"Seventy-two," Reid was already starting to throw them open, one by one.

They each took a corner and got to work.

**There**

While they were looking, JJ was waiting. A bit of dim light seeped in around the cracks in the door, and there was just barely enough space for her to lift her head and look down her body, just barely, which was what she was doing when the movement caught her eye.

It's just a bug, she thought.

It was just a bug. In fact it was a large cockroach. It crawled up the underside of the trapdoor toward her face.

It's just a bug, she thought, just a bug.

It fell, landing on her stomach, flipping over, and started exploring the contours beneath her left breast.

It's just a bug, she thought, just a bug, just a bug, just a bug, just a bug.

She lay back and felt another one crawling up the side of her neck toward the too easy to wiggle under gag.

That was when she panicked and started thrashing.

**Nowhere**.

_So cold_

_So tired_

_I may be done._

_Coughing._

_I may be done_

**Here.**

"Wait!"

They had opened maybe a quarter of the trapdoors when Reid called out. They all heard it, movement coming from one of the spaces near the center.

They ran toward it, opened it, and pulled out JJ. Morgan started unbuckling the gag while Prentiss knocked off the half dozen cockroaches that had been crawling on her, with a sound of disgust.

"Oh, God, oh God, get them off! Get them off!" was all JJ had to say when they got the gag off of her.

The guys left her with Prentiss, to cut her free and get her dressed, while they went back to looking. Quieter now in case they heard….

"Wait." Rossi said. "Do you hear that?"

A faint sound, from that door there….

Reid ran over and yanked up the door, "Gwen?!"


	12. Chapter 12

**The Hospital, Pt. 1**

**Monday**

**Noon**

The rest of the team landed next to Reid, as he lifted the woman out of the space in the floor. She was pale, shivering, emaciated, still locked in torture devices, including a similar gag. As Reid cradled her head in his lap, Morgan removed the gag.

As soon as the gag came out she started coughing. A deep, raking sound. Reid was too caught up to speak; it was all he could do to hold his wife and gently run his fingers through her hair.

Gwen was alive.

Hotch was already calling the medics in. As Morgan started working on the arm binder, Rossi gently touched his hand to her forehead, leaned over and noticed the blue of her lips, the slight spattering of blood. "Hotch, she's burning up."

"We're airlifting her straight to UCLA Medical, the trauma unit there. You and I will stay behind to clean up, Morgan, you and Prentiss are going to take JJ and Reid in another chopper. I want JJ checked out too."

Reid was bent over his shivering wife, praying to something he didn't believe in not to take her, not now, now that he had found her again. Quietly he begged her to just open her eyes. It took him a moment to realize, before he looked up, his face a mixture of shock and pain. "They glued her eyes shut."

The others stopped, stunned. Hotch spoke up, "I wonder if she'll be able to ID any of them."

"She has to survive first." Rossi poked Morgan, and they got out of the way of the medical team.

-

**Night**

Rossi, Hotch and Garcia finally caught up with the team in the waiting room at the hospital. JJ had been released a while earlier, and was sitting with the others. Reid was looking off into the past, letting his coffee cool in his hands.

Hotch walked straight up to JJ first. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, a few bumps and bruises; I may have pulled a muscle in my shoulder a little, but some ice and I'll be fine."

"That's not what I'm asking."

JJ looked Hotch right in the eye. "It was terrifying and I never want to do it again, but yeah, I'm going to be all right."

"Good," he looked at the rest of the clearly fretting team, "Any word."

They were about to answer no when a doctor walked into the waiting room. "Who's here for Gwen Reid?"

They gathered around, but Reid spoke up. "I'm her…husband, Dr. Spencer Reid. How is she?"

"We found multiple cracked ribs as well as a bad case of pneumonia so we've had to put her on a ventilator. With that, the pain of her other issues, and the trauma she's suffered, we've had to induce a coma. "

As Reid stood there and digested the implications of this, Prentiss spoke up, "What about the rest of her condition?"

The doctor went through a list of what they had found, what needed stitches, what needed splints, what needed cleaning to prevent infection. Little of it was good. "The biggest problem is body weight. Her current BMI is dangerously low, and we're afraid the weight loss may have weakened her heart. At the moment its fine, but we're keeping an eye on it. If she can make it past the pneumonia, she still has a long haul ahead. Honestly, she's not out of the woods yet, the next 48 hours should tell the tale."

Rossi almost chuckled. "Don't you have any good news?"

The doctor smiled. "Yes. We were able to get her eyes open; there was no damage to her corneas. When she comes out of it she ought to be able to see just fine."

While the emotional side of his brain tried to process the roller coaster of finding her, then finding out she was still in danger, the analytical side was still talking. "Given the amount of trauma she's been through, I'm concerned about ICU psychosis. The environment might be too similar to some of the places where she's been held. Can I go see her? Maybe having someone familiar there will help stave it off."

The doctor nodded. "She's being moved up to the ICU now. They allow two visitors at a time."

Everyone looked at each other, who would go with him? "Well, if none of you are going to speak up, I'll go." Garcia took Reid by the arm and started steering him in the direction of the ICU.

Once at the ICU they approached the bed almost gingerly, as if approaching a bomb that might go off. "Oh my God, she's so little." Garcia breathed, even as she gave Reid a gentle shove in the direction of his wife's bed. She dropped herself into the visitor's chair, her usually animated face now clouded with worry.

Reid walked up to the bed. He looked over all the different tubes and wires with a mixture of intellectual curiosity, gratitude and despair. They had put one IV in the side of her neck, or close to it, and were pumping in various fluids, some clear, different colors, one thick, creamy substance. Liquid nutrition, he realized. There was something oddly nurturing about that, and disquieting all at the same time. The ventilator tube hung out the side of her mouth was taped to her chin, her chest rising and falling in time with the hiss of the machine. All he could think of was JJ's gag, and how it was less invasive. He looked even further down, say a bag with an amber liquid hanging on the side of the bed, realized what it meant.

"Garcia, do you know if we can bring in flowers? Maybe some music?" Something, he thought, something from the past that might comfort her. The ICU smelled like a hospital, vaguely unpleasant, and someone down the unit was moaning in a way that would be cries of pain soon.

Garcia checked a list of rules that was in a folder they had been handed when they came in. "Um, no. It says they aren't allowed. Something about breeding bacteria and disrupting equipment."

"Oh." How is this different, he thought, from what we saw in those videos? They care for her, they want her to get better, everyone is doing the most impressive job I've ever seen. But from her point of view, what is the difference? This is the best place for her body, but what about her soul?

Reid bent over his wife, lying there in the middle of it all. They'd cleaned off her hair, he realized. Someone, somewhere had at least rinsed the filth from it. It clung to the pillow like dull, reddish lace. It's a beginning, he thought, we can start from there. He stroked her head, his voice breaking. "Don't come back yet. I love you, but don't come back yet. Stay where you are, it's too scary for you. Heck, it's too scary for me. Just stay there for now, let us fight for you. Just stay where you are until we make it better. And if you can't come back, that's okay too. Because you're safe now, and I love you. And I always will."


	13. Chapter 13

**The Hospital, Pt. 2**

**One week later**

Everyone except Reid was supposed to be back at Quantico. Strauss was not surprised to see that Hotch had approved vacation requests for everyone. The only reason why he was back in Virginia was because she'd refused to approve his.

She was equally unsurprised to see that the plane was undergoing emergency repairs as well, or that a part had to be ordered, or that no one knew when it would get in.

Even she didn't complain too hard.

**Two weeks later**

For two weeks Spenser Reid sat by his wife's beside. He watched the nurses turn her, bathe her, tend to her as carefully as they could until her cuts and bruises healed. He watched them almost literally pump weight on to her via the nutrition they forced into her veins. He watched their machines breathe for her. He did whatever little things they let him do, to help fight for her. And when they had done what they could, when she was strong enough, they took her off the ventilator and lowered the levels of medication.

She didn't respond.

They said she was in a coma, one no longer medically induced.

They didn't know if or when she would wake up.

**Three days later**

"That's Sting."*

JJ looked up from her book, and over at Garcia, who was sitting there, knitting. The staff had been generous, after the young FBI agent had been there for so long. He simply never left his wife's bedside. The other team members took turns making sure he ate and changed clothes, sitting with her while he slept as best he could. At the moment, Garcia and JJ were on duty while he slept in an unused room. "I don't think so. It's some classical lute thing he said she likes. He thought it would comfort her."

Garcia frowned. "No, it's Sting, I swear. What does it say on the iPod."

JJ got up and went over to the shelf to take a look. Most of the surfaces in the room were crowded with flowers, from people at the FBI, people at Cal Tech, even a big arrangement from Peter and the people at the armory. Two stood out, the bowl of roses Reid kept right beside her bed and a small one meant for a baby, with a teddy bear attached. The card had simply read 'JG'.

They had all been surprised at that one. Except Reid.

JJ had to snake her hand between two vases to even reach the iPod player. "I can't see it. Darn." She turned it up so they could hear the singer with the next song.

**Nowhere**

_It was warm._

_For the longest time they had even taken her breathing from her. _

_Even that from her._

_Even that._

_She had crawled into the darkness and waited there. _

_To die._

_This, then, must be heaven. _

_It was warm._

_It was soft_

_It smelled like roses._

_You ought to be able to see in heaven. _

_It must just be dark here. _

_That was a lute, somewhere nearby. _

_The musician must have light._

_If I follow the music, perhaps I can find the light…_

**Here**

"Yeah, you were right. I didn't know he did classical."

"Hah. I am the goddess of all knowledge, baby." Garcia turned back to her knitting, only to catch sight of sapphire blue eyes, watching her. "Ohhh. Oh, hey. Hi there."

This was not what Gwen had ever expected in an angel. She could hear the music, smell the roses, and everything was soft and warm. _This must be heaven._ But she never expected an angel with bright clothing, pink and blond hair, or acid green glasses. "You're an angel?" It was meant to be a whisper; it came out as a croak.

"So I've been told. I'm Penelope. Welcome back." She moved closer, kept talking softly as JJ went to wake Reid.

"This isn't heaven?" _I'm not dead?_

"Nope. Heaven would have better food." Garcia turned as she heard the door opening beyond the privacy curtain. "Besides, I think this might be better."

Gwen looked over at the man standing at the foot of the bed. He was thinner than she remembered, really, and somehow more worn. Those circles looked etched below his eyes, and his hair was too long. He must not have been caring for it. It had to be…real. "Spencer?"

JJ and Garcia edged away as Spencer Reid walked toward the head of the bed, and gently touched his wife's cheek. He didn't bother to hide the tears in his eyes. And neither did she.

**The end**.

Please Note: The story of Spenser and Gwen will continue in a day or two, in another adventure.

*The music referenced in this story is from the album _Songs from the Labyrinth_. John Dowland, composer, Edin Karamazov and Sting, performers.


End file.
